A$AP Rocky trial begins closing arguments and Rihanna comes to court with their toddler sons

A$AP Rocky sits in a courtroom at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (Frazer Harrison/Pool Photo via AP)

LOS ANGELES — With Rihanna and two toddlers looking on from the audience, a prosecutor at the Los Angeles trial of A$AP Rocky told jurors during his closing argument Thursday that they have “one critical question” to answer.

“Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec said. “Nothing else is in dispute.”

Both sides gave their answers during closings at the Los Angeles trial, where the hip-hop star is accused of firing at a former friend on a Hollywood street in 2021.

Przelomiec argued that Rocky was undeniably guilty of two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

The defence says the gun was a prop that fires only blanks that Rocky took for security months earlier from the set of his music video for “DMB,” which featured Rihanna.

Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said the accuser and key prosecution witness is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again.”

Rocky, the Grammy-nominated music star, fashion mogul and actor whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, is the longtime partner of singing superstar Rihanna, who has attended the trial sporadically. For the first time, she brought their two sons -- 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers -- entering the courtroom quietly but dramatically a few minutes into closings.

The boys, wearing suits, could be heard cooing as the prosecutor talked. Rihanna held one on her lap and tried to keep him quiet with a toy. During a break, Rocky walked down the hall, past jurors, holding the younger boy. Rihanna returned to court without them after lunch.

The defence will complete its closing argument on Friday. After a rebuttal from prosecutors, jurors will begin deliberations.

Rocky could get up to 24 years in prison if convicted.

The jurors are not supposed to know the possible sentence. But during testimony, Rocky’s tour manager, Lou Levin, said, “I read that he was facing 24 years,” after a prosecutor hounded him about whether he wanted to see his friend and sometime boss convicted.

In his closing, Przelomiec said it was intentional.

Rocky and the man he’s accused of shooting, who goes by A$AP Relli, became friends in high school in New York. Both were members of a crew of creative types called the A$AP Mob.

Their friendship continued after Rocky gained global fame with No. 1 albums in 2012 and 2013, but by Nov. 6, 2021, their bond had become a beef.

They met up outside a Hollywood hotel and scuffled. In a second confrontation moments later, Rocky fired the shots. Relli said his knuckles were grazed by one of them.

Tacopina called the injury “knuckle scrapes.”

“There’s no bullet in the world that could’ve done that,” Tacopina said, showing jurors a picture of Relli’s hand.

A$AP Twelvyy, a friend who was with Rocky, testified that Rocky fired the shots as a warning to stop Relli from attacking another member of their crew, A$AP Illz.

The moment was captured on blurry surveillance video, leaving it open to interpretation. It shows Relli holding Illz in front of him.

The prosecution argues that Rocky moves forward in an attempt to get a clear shot at Relli that wouldn’t hit Illz.

“They would have you believe that Rocky shot a real gun at his friend Illz, who was right there,” Tacopina countered. “That makes no sense.”

Twelvyy and Levin testified that Rocky fired blanks from a prop gun that everyone involved knew he carried. Both were clearly coached and coordinated, Przelomiec said.

“What they got on the stand and told you were lies,” he said.

The prosecutor said Rocky even coached Twelvyy live in court, when the witness was asked what the initials AWGE -- the name of Rocky’s creative agency and record label -- stand for.

“Don’t say it!” Rocky, who doggedly keeps the answer secret, shouted.

Tacopina said the defence witnesses were consistent and poised, unlike the petulant and backpedaling accuser.

“They didn’t get tripped up once,” the lawyer told jurors. “Because the truth is easy to remember.”

Neither side produced a gun as evidence.

“There is literally no evidence of a prop gun,” the prosecutor said.

Tacopina countered that “there’s definitely a lot less evidence of a real gun.”

Relli also sued Rocky, whose attorneys cast Relli as a jealous opportunist. In phone calls recorded by a mutual friend who gave the recordings to Rocky, Relli said he was going to take Rocky for millions.

“If Relli had gotten his 30 million,” Tacopina said, “there would be no witness in this case.”

Relli testified the calls, introduced into evidence by the defence, were faked, but the prosecution played long excerpts during closings to point out what Relli said on them was “exactly what he told you here in court.”

“Mr. Ephron wants to get paid,” Przelomiec said, “because he was the victim of a real crime.”

Article written by Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press